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Hey, everybody. There is a new HOWTO version available. It doesn't contain
anything groundshaking, except that it does (finally) incorporate an
updated version of demo.c. And it fixes the error in spelling Paolo's name
:)
Since this is now public, I'd like to put out a request for several
additions. In particular, LNP documentation is basically non-existent,
dsound documentation is lacking, and there is no demo code for the
rotation sensors. The second and third are just because I haven't had
time, but the first is just because I don't know. If anyone would like to
remedy those problems, just let me know, or even better just do it. Also,
the organization for the demo code is currently very poor. Anyone who has
suggestions on how to do it better, please feel free. Finally, demo.c
hasn't actually been tested- I wrote it on a train, on my laptop, which
has none of the legOS tools install nor any network connectivity which I
could use to install it with. :( So, if you find errors in the actual
code, please let me know.
Besides that, there are two other pieces of major HOWTO news:
* The HOWTO is now in CVS at sourceforge. You can check it out with
(basically) the same procedure you'd use for the legOS source- see
http://legOS.sourceforge.net/ for details. If you feel that you have
something to contribute, let me know and I can either apply a patch or (if
you have enough to add) I can give you write access to the CVS tree.
* The HOWTO is now done completely in Docbook SGML. SGML is a markup
language, similar in format to HTML. The big advantage that SGML has over
HTML (and the reason I've chosen it) is that it is really easy to create
HTML, postscript, and text versions of a document from SGML. The author
doesn't have to worry about formatting- the tools take care of that for
you. (I /hate/ formatting stuff in HTML- it always comes out poorly.)
There are other advantages. It's really, really easy to learn- took me all
of about 15 minutes to get up to speed. It can be edited with any text
editor- emacs is nice, but definitely not mandatory. Besides
multi-format-ness, the tools do cool things like automatically generate
tables of contents and automatically number sections. The main tools (jade
and nsgmls) are available on both Linux and Windows. There is also great
free documentation. O'Reilly has put up their Definitive Guide to Docbook
free on the web, and it contains great examples and a complete listing of
all tags. It is at http://docbook.org/tdg/html/docbook.html. For those of
you on Windows, there is a very complete guide to setting up SGML tools on
Windows:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hoenicka_markus/ntsgml.html. Most
Linux distributions should also have the necessary tools as .deb or .rpm
files- check out the HOWTO-HOWTO http://linuxdoc.org/LDP/LDP-Author-Guide/
for some hints. To sum up: SGML has a lot of advantages that make the
writing of very large documents (like this one- 11K words and counting)
much easier, so I'm going to stick with it in future versions of the
HOWTO.
Anyway, as usual, feedback is welcomed. Any small bugs or what have you-
please let me know. I hope to get back actively involved with "real"
development shortly- as soon as I get a new motherboard :(
Luis
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"Summertime... and the living is easy...
fish are jumping and the cotton is high...
So hush, little baby, baby don't you cry."
-Ella
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